Locked, Not Loaded

Simulations Show how HIV Drug Traps Virus in an Inactive State

Though AIDS survival is up and new cases are down, the HIV virus is still a major cause of sickness and death. Juan Perilla of the University of Delaware and his colleagues used the Anton 2 system at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center to understand better how HIV “matures” to its active state. They found that a class of anti-AIDS drugs may work by locking the virus in its immature form, suggesting a route toward new treatments.

Snapping into Place

Tubulin proteins are the cell’s “Lego bricks,”connecting with themselves into tubular structures that help give living cells shape and stiffness. But the protein may also play a role in energy generation by the cell’s mitochondria, with individual tubulin “bricks” sticking to the surface of mitochondria by a poorly understood mechanism. Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and elsewhere used the Anton 2 system hosted at PSC to unravel how tubulin snaps into place—offering clues to phenomena as different as chemotherapy side effects, cancer, and brain development.

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PSC is a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Established in 1986, PSC is supported by several federal agencies, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and private industry and is a leading partner in XSEDE (Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment), the National Science Foundation cyber-infrastructure program.